Trusting your gut is like coming home. It’s that feeling of utter rightness. It’s knowing that whatever decision we just made was meant to be.
The problem. How do you trust your gut?
It’s easy to say “trust your gut,” but it’s an entirely different thing to put that saying into practice.
As I have gotten older, and with the help of a wonderful therapist, there’s something I’ve noticed that seems to be at the root of a lot of my anxieties. It’s the loss of that full, uninhibited trust in myself, that trust in my gut.
Somewhere along the line, I’ve become disconnected with gut feelings.
My ability to trust my gut looks like you’re midway through an intense game of Jenga. Where the stack is looking a little lopsided and has holes in the middle because everyone has been expertly pulling out pieces.
Over the years I’ve unknowingly been pulling pieces out of my own Jenga game, that is the trust with my gut. And that is what has made it so difficult for me to even realize that I had lost trust with my gut.
So how do you regain trust in your gut?
I think it starts with talking. When we talk it starts to bring awareness of how we feel.
Feelings are hard, but it helps us pinpoint the areas in ourselves that might need love. The places where we might have lost trust in our gut.
As we talk, we start to rebuild that trust with our gut.
It’s like putting back those missing Jenga pieces. The stack starts to fill out and strengthen again. The more you put back those pieces, the more you rebuild that trust.
Now there will be times when pieces fall out, or your stack is looking like the leaning tower of Pisa. But that doesn’t mean you can’t recover and it also doesn’t mean that you have to start over.
This is where reframing trusting your gut as a practice, a journey, not a destination comes into play. Knowing that helps remove the unrealistic expectation that we have to be perfect.
Start talking, give yourself compassion, and you’ll start strengthening that connection to yourself and come home to your true self.
Amanda Sauceda
